What Is a 302 Redirect in SEO?

Somebody moved a page last spring. Type the old address today and you land on the new one, so the job looks finished. Then the reports arrive and Google is still showing the address you retired.

The status code behind that redirect was a 302. Nobody in the building picked it.

A 302 is a temporary redirect. That is the entire definition. It explains almost nothing about why the page above went sideways. The SEO part sits underneath. Two visitors see identical behaviour, while two crawlers are handed opposite instructions.

The Number Is a Promise, Not a Description

Two codes cover nearly every move a website makes. A 301 says the old address is finished. The 302 says it is coming back.

Both send the visitor to the same destination. Browsers follow either without complaint. Your customers will never know which one you used, ever.

Crawlers read them as different orders. Google’s redirect documentation treats a permanent redirect as a strong signal that the target should become the canonical URL. A temporary redirect is the opposite instruction. Hold the original. The move is not settled.

So the number is not a label describing what you already did. It is a claim about what happens next.

Most redirect mistakes are that tense error. Past versus future.

Almost Nobody Picks a 302 on Purpose

Here is where the damage starts on real sites. Server defaults.

Apache’s Redirect directive issues a 302 whenever you leave the status off. Write Redirect /old-page /new-page into an .htaccess file and a temporary redirect ships without anybody typing the word temporary.

Nginx arrives at 302 by another road. The rewrite directive with the redirect flag returns 302. Swap in permanent and it returns 301. One word apart, on the same line.

PHP behaves the same way. A bare header() call carrying a Location value sends 302 unless you pass a code beside it. WordPress inherits that habit through wp_redirect(), which takes 302 as its default status. Plugins and theme functions built on top of it inherit the temporary code too. Few people read a plugin’s redirect defaults before installing it.

Then the CDN layer gets a vote. A redirect rule sitting in front of your server carries its own status-code field, set separately from anything in your config. Two systems answer the same request. Whichever one sits closest to the visitor wins.

Now count how many of those were decisions. None.

The Objection: 302s Do Not Pass Link Equity

That objection lands within five seconds of this topic. Every time. It deserves an answer, because it is the reason wrong status codes survive for years on otherwise well-run sites.

Google has said for a long time that signals pass through redirects whatever the number attached. So the folklore is wrong about mechanism. Nothing is being withheld.

The folklore is right about the symptom, though. People genuinely watched a new URL fail to rank while an old one held position. That happened to them. They simply named the wrong cause.

Nothing leaked anywhere. The equity was sitting exactly where they had instructed Google to keep it. On the old URL. A 302 does not narrow the pipe; it points the pipe at a different end. Same observation either way. Different explanation. And the observation confirms the argument rather than denying it.

Which makes the objection the clearest proof available. Ranking signals obey your canonical instruction. The status code is that instruction.

What Google Does While It Waits

The old URL keeps its place in the index. Documented consequence, not punishment.

Crawlers also keep returning to it. A temporary redirect promises change, so the retired address stays on the schedule. Crawl attention goes to a page you abandoned months ago.

SEO reporting splits along the same seam. Impressions and clicks are credited to whichever URL Google treats as canonical. Open the new page in Search Console and the numbers look like they evaporated. They did not move, because you never told Google they should.

Google has also said that a temporary redirect left up long enough eventually gets read as a permanent one. Treat that as a mercy rather than a plan. Documented behaviour can change. Meanwhile the bill arrives as months of ambiguity, which is the actual cost of the wrong code. Not lost authority. Lost time.

Check Which URL Google Kept

No paid tool required for this. Open Search Console. Run URL Inspection on the new address. Read the line marked Google-selected canonical.

That single line settles it. On a temporary redirect it names the old URL. Google believed you.

Then verify the code itself. Open your browser’s developer tools. Load the Network tab. Request the old address and read the first row. The status shows there in plain numbers. A terminal works too, with curl -I against the old URL.

Do it for every address you moved. Not a sample of them. Redirect maps break one line at a time, and the broken line is rarely the one you would guess.

The Cases Where a 302 Is the Right Code

Shorter than people assume, this list.

A page pulled down for maintenance this afternoon. Something genuinely returning by Friday.

Seasonal landing pages qualify, parked on a parent category between campaigns. Next November it wakes up again, so the original address should keep its standing.

Split testing, where the original URL stays canonical while a variant collects traffic. Language or region routing, where the source URL still serves people arriving another way.

Notice what those share. In each case you can roughly name the date the redirect comes off.

Cannot name one? Then it is a 301, and you are only postponing the paperwork.

Two More Numbers Worth Knowing

A 307 is a temporary redirect that preserves the request method. Its permanent twin is the 308. Both exist because browsers spent years quietly converting POST requests into GET while following a 302.

For ordinary content moves, 301 and 302 stay the pair you deal with. Forms and API endpoints are where 307 earns its keep. Still, knowing the difference matters less than knowing which one your stack emits by default.

How Redirect Checks Run at To-The-TOP! in Calgary

SEO Company To-The-TOP! has been handling site moves for Calgary businesses since 2007. Status codes get checked early in every new SEO engagement. The check costs minutes. It comes back wrong often enough to justify going first.

One pattern repeats constantly. A business redesigns. Somebody adds the redirects through a plugin. Rankings then drift for a quarter with nobody able to explain it. Then a status-code pass over the redirect map accounts for the whole quarter. Every 302 in it sitting where a 301 belonged.

Paid traffic hides the same fault more expensively. Point a Google Ads management campaign at a URL that redirects and every click buys an extra hop first. Money spent before anybody sees the offer. Worth checking the destination field before the budget field.

Solo practitioner here, so the person reading your redirect map is the person who wrote the plan. No handoff between juniors. That is how Calgary SEO has run at To-The-TOP! for nineteen years. A website audit surfaces the rest of what a redesign left behind. Yet most of that is duller than a wrong status code.

No guarantees on positions. Three to six months before meaningful movement, longer in a crowded market. That timeline holds whether your SEO services work starts with redirects or with content.

Common Questions About 302 Redirects

Is a 302 redirect bad for SEO?

Only when the move it describes was permanent. Used correctly it is the right tool. Put it on a finished migration and it tells Google to keep indexing an address you no longer maintain. Wrong tense rather than wrong tool.

Does a 302 redirect pass link equity?

Yes, according to what Google has said for years. The old belief that it blocks equity came from watching old URLs keep their rankings. That is canonicalization doing what it was told, not signals leaking away.

How long can a 302 redirect stay in place?

As long as the temporary situation genuinely lasts. Weeks are fine. A year is a confession. Google has indicated that long-lived temporary redirects eventually get treated as permanent. Relying on that is still a worse plan than fixing the code yourself.

Should I use 301 or 302 after a redesign?

A 301 for every changed URL. Redesigns are permanent by definition, and a plugin default is the usual reason a redesign ships 302s nobody asked for. Check the codes after launch, not only the destinations.

How do I tell whether a redirect is 301 or 302?

Load the old URL with your browser’s Network tab open and read the status column. Or run curl -I and read the first line. Both take seconds per URL, which is why doing it in bulk beats spot-checking.

Most search engine optimization work does not turn on a single character. This one nearly does. On plenty of sites, a 1 should be sitting where a 2 is.